


Bread Flour

by Hormonal_Trashbag



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bakery, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 17:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10340829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hormonal_Trashbag/pseuds/Hormonal_Trashbag
Summary: Five years after the war ended, Ben is a free man. Unfortunately, the one person he wants to see most has all but disappeared.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has been bugging me all week.

It had been five years since the end of the war and at last, he was walking out as a free man. His sentence had been astonishingly short, and he had no idea how his mother had arranged it nor did he particularly want to know. Even the act of appearing to the Resistance with First Order information and Snoke’s head shouldn’t have gotten him out a public execution--an event that would have undoubtedly pleased many. He couldn’t blame anyone for their disappointment at his brief imprisonment.

His mother, accompanied by C-3PO, was the sole person to meet him as he stepped outside prison walls. Ben was unsurprised. He nearly wished she hadn’t bothered either but this thought passed quickly when she wrapped her little arms around him.

He ducked his head and buried his face into her graying hair, breathing in the familiar scent of her perfume. In all the years since his childhood, it hadn’t changed.

Ben did not dare ask where his uncle was; Luke deserved some peace after all he’s taken from him. He might never see his uncle again and however much the notion ached in his chest, Ben would not be the cause of more pain. Chewbacca, he knew, could never forgive him and Ben couldn’t ever ask so much of him.

There was only one other person Ben cared to see.

 _Rey_.

Through his sentence, he had worn shackles that smothered his ability to sense anything in the force and finally, he could feel her once more. She was so warm and full of light that Ben was just as baffled as the first time he had met her, what now felt like a lifetime ago.

She must have completed her training in the five years since Ben had last seen her. Becoming a Jedi in the midst of a war was no easy task, as his uncle had once attested. Was she training her own apprentice? Ben smiled at the thought. If there was ever a person that deserved happiness and belonging, it was Rey.

He wasn’t very subtle when he asked his mother what had become of her. She gave him a knowing look and Ben looked away, ears burning.

He was shocked to learn that she had disappeared as soon as the war was officially declared over. Without a second thought, Ben left to find her.

 

* * *

 

Confusion curled in his gut when he landed on Corellia, the birth-planet of his father. He traced her with ease to a small bakery, hesitating only as he gazed inside. Ben could smell the rich, rising yeast and the sugar of sweetcakes, and couldn’t make sense of why she would be here, of all places.

Ben steeled himself, squaring his shoulders to walk through the front entrance. He was greeted by a cheerful, teenaged togruta. Business was booming, a line of mothers and workers on the lunch breaks in line to purchase freshly baked goods. He waited his turn, more anxious with each moment until he finally reached the counter.

“How can I help you, sir?” the togruta girl asked, practiced smile flashing up at him.

He cleared his throat. “I’m an old acquaintance of Rey. Is she here?”

The girl gave him a long look-over, evidently satisfied by something because she turned her head towards the kitchen behind her to call, “Hey boss! There’s a friend here to see you!”

 _Boss?_ He hardly had the chance to process this revelation before he heard her voice, more lovely than he remembered, with its coruscanti lilt.

“Just send them back, Vakyi. I’ve got my hands full.”

Vakyi grinned, sending him into the kitchen with a shooing gesture of her hands, likely impatient to get to a paying customer. Ben had to force his legs to move.

There she was, flour smeared on her cheeks, apron dusted with white, a ball of dough pressed flat under sticky palms. Her eyes, so vividly hazel that his mind could never recreate it from memory, widened in shock, her hands going still.

 _Oh_. She was beautiful.

How could he have forgotten? Ben stood frozen on the spot.

Without a word, she lifted a hand and the kitchen door slammed shut behind him.

She kept her voice neutral when she spoke. “What are you doing here?”

Ben wasn’t sure what answer could please her. He had followed the link between them to this bakery because she was a part of him. A piece that he couldn’t cut off, even if he wanted to. There was a time he had tried, ridiculous as it seemed to him now.

He tried to match her tone of indifference but knew it was hardly convincing. “I could ask you the same.”

Rey continued her kneading with sharp shoves, seething.

“I was never supposed to play any part in the war, I was dragged into it. I don’t want any reminders, least of all from you.”

Her words stung but it was nothing he didn’t deserve to hear. Ben swallowed, breaking his gaze away from her to stare down at his boots.

“So?” she continued with a snarl. “What do you want?”

He bit his lower lip. It seemed unwise to be anything other than honest with her.

“To see you,” he answered, voice low.

“To see me,” she repeated back with an incredulous sneer. “Well, that’s just fantastic. You got to see me, now get the hell out of my kitchen before I _make_ you.”

He had no right to argue. Ben knew she was being reasonable. She had been dragged into the war--by _him_. If not for his abduction on Takodana, she would have slinked back to Jakku to return to her scavenger life, forever waiting for a family that was never coming back. But that had been her decision, and he had taken her choice from her, the moment her narrow body dropped unconscious into his arms.

“Rey, please--”

“Watch it,” she interrupted, slapping the counter. “By the maker, Ben, I’ll add you to the menu. Coward’s pie.”

He blinked. She had used his given name. He looked at her as she realized the same thing, annoyance crossing her features.

“You’re afraid,” he mumbled. “Of what, our bond?”

Her eyes narrowed at him. “Don’t get any funny ideas.”

So, that was it. She feared their connection, perhaps she always had. Ben could understand the sentiment; at times, he too feared the way the force had seemingly chosen them to be bonded. Choice had had nothing to do with the matter--maybe that was what she disliked so strongly.

There was more to it than that, though.

Ben took a deep breath. “Are you punishing yourself?”

He could think of no other reason she would decide to isolate herself from all her friends and hide away in a little shop, denying her destiny as a force user. She was so gifted and yet she squandered her abilities.

Ben took in her appearance more fully and the differences seemed to stand out to him. She was softer, now that she had a regular diet and less strenuous exercise regime, though he supposed she would always be a slender, little thing to him. Her skin had lightened considerably. Rey was spending much less time outside in the sunlight. She still worked with her hands but he wondered if her rough callouses had faded with her gentle lifestyle.

He couldn’t help seeing deeper than her outer, physical self to the layers beneath. She was lonely. Rey had friends and her employee but she dared not let them close. Everyone was kept at a safe arm’s length.

Rey may have been satisfied with her bakery, but she was a far cry from happy.

Her eyes rounded, face flushed with shame. “Stop that--”

He interrupted with a sharp tone. “Why?”

What reason could she have to feel such remorse? Such _guilt?_

Rey had effectively replaced him, back before he retook his given name. She had admired his scoundrel father and been the daring pilot he had always hoped for in his son. She became the dedicated student to his uncle as Ben never had. She had gained Chewbacca’s loyalty with ease, his mother’s love, the friends he should have had if Ben hadn’t wandered to the dark side. He had never resented her for it, not when she was the child his mother deserved.

Tears gathered in her eyes. She had followed his train of thought.

“Ben, don’t--”

“What about your friends?”

Finn and Dameron had meant so much to her--Ben had felt it keenly all through the war. It had pained him, once.

She wiped her eyes with her forearm as Ben approached her workstation. Her ball of dough lay forgotten on the durasteel counter.

“What about my _mother?”_ he questioned, jaw set. “Do you have any idea how heartbroken she must have felt when you disappeared?”

“I can’t--”

“And my uncle?” he continued, no longer able to hold in his frustration, his voice gaining volume. “You became his apprentice! He trained you to continue the Jedi tradition! You repay that by abandoning him?”

“Please--”

Ben cut her off with a yell. “You had everything! You were important! You--”

She thrust her hand into the container of flour beside her and threw a fistful at his face with a cry.

“I was in love with you!”

It was as if Corellia had stopped spinning on its axis and its orbit had suddenly halted. The flour she had tossed at him hung in a suspended cloud of white particles. Ben gaped at her in disbelief, her chest heaving.

“I was in love with you,” she repeated, hiccuping. “How could I face Finn and Poe when they would see it as a betrayal? I was never going to be able to abide by the Jedi way when all I wanted was you. You, a convicted criminal that had killed his own father before my eyes.”

Ben had to remember how to breathe.

Rey closed her eyes as she continued in a harsh tone. “How was I supposed to face General Organa when every time I met her gaze, all I could see was you?”

Tears were trickling from her chin to drip onto her forgotten dough. He wanted to reach across the counter to brush them from her pink face, joy and agony twisting in his gut.

“I will never forgive myself for the way I’ve let you haunt me.”

His heart fell. Ben didn’t know how he could possibly fix this. Even now, all he did was break the things he touched. Rey deserved so much more.

She sobbed, voice cracking as she asked again, “Why are you here, Ben?”

He hardly had a better answer to give her. “To see you.”

She barked a wet laugh.

“Because for the last five years, all I’ve thought about is seeing your face,” he amended softly. “All I’ve ever wanted was to stand at your side, at whatever capacity you would allow.”

Her lips trembled, her shoulders shaking as she stared at him through moist, clumping eyelashes.

“You--” she started.

“--have had feelings for you since the moment the Skywalker lightsaber flew into your hand,” he finished in a whisper.

Her eyelashes fluttered as silence fell, gazing down at the thick layer of flour dusting her dough, disturbed only by small, watery circles where her tears had dropped. Then she looked back at him.

Rey broke into a fit of hysterical giggles, gripping the edge of the counter to keep herself from doubling over.

Ben frowned, rounding about her workstation with what courage he could muster.

“What?”

She gasped through her laughter. “You’re covered in flour and my dough is ruined. I’ll have to start from scratch.”

He didn’t get the opportunity to ask what she found so humorous about that before she was gripping his shirt and tugging him towards her.

She kissed him viciously, dragging her teeth across his lower lip in a way that sent shivers down his spine. His hesitation was short-lived and he returned in kind, angling his mouth to taste the sweetness of her breath on his tongue. The way she arched and moaned against him was decadent and obscene all at once. For as long as he lived, he would never get enough he realized, his hands curling around her waist.

This new exploration of each other was cut short when Vakyi, undoubtedly concerned by the shouting match and subsequent silence, came barrelling into the kitchen to get an eyeful. Rey broke away at that, grinning sheepishly when the togruta cocked her hip to one side and gave a low, teasing whistle.

“Wow, boss, who knew you had it in you? And here I thought you were a total prude.”

“Oh, go back to the front. There are customers up there still.”

Vakyi didn’t need to be told twice. The moment the door shut behind her, Ben cupped her cheeks with both palms, thumbs stroking flour and tears over her freckles and ultimately making more of a mess. His lips pulled upward almost against his will in a dopey smile.

He leaned down to kiss her again, slowly this time. It was achingly sweet and brief, but he could feel her own smile against his mouth as he rested his forehead on hers.

“Go grab an apron and wash your hands,” she said. “You’re going to help me fix this mess.”

So long as Ben was with her, he didn’t care _what_ they did. The rest could be sorted later.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I will not be continuing this fic...it's going to remain a one-shot.


End file.
